Visitors to the Camp Silver Lake area have a choice of many nearby eateries, if they're the diner on the highway and the crummy motel next to the truck stop.
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.
"I guess this could be worse," said Rory, turning the laminated Hungry Gila Diner menu over in her hands. She was crammed into the booth between her mother and the diner window.
"Rory, be nice," said Ella.
"I'd like something that used to be a cow, please, with pig on it if that's the sitch," Rory said, handing her menu to the waitress.
"She'll have your regular burger with no onions or pickles," corrected Chloe. "Be nice," she said to Rory.
"I said 'sitch,'" said Rory. "With an S."
"Is she getting cranky?" asked Stevens. "Is it past her bedtime?"
"She is right here, and who the schplorf says 'cranky'?" asked Rory.
"Uhhhhh..."
"Let's talk next steps," said Chloe. "What we'd do at this point is work out a timeline of events, establish who was where when, and see if any patterns emerge."
"We tended to do this on a big giant whiteboard, buuuuuut..." Ella took hold of the dinosaur drawing page that the waitress hadn't taken away despite Rory's eyebrow hitting the ceiling. "You gonna use these?" Ella asked.
"Nope. Go crazy," said Rory. She nudged Stevens in the ribs. "You'll want to pay attention. She does this thing where she draws like mantis arms on the stegosaurus and it looks like it's—oh. Dead camp counselor timeline. Right."
Ella turned the paper around. "We'll cover Rory's part of the action tonight, and we'll do the rest tomorrow. So over here on the right, we're going to put Rory and Noah finding the body," she said. "About how long after that did you split with Moira?"
"Just after the cafeteria," said Rory. "Couple minutes?"
"I won't know until the medical examiner's office messages me with their findings, but it sounded like Patricia had been in the water a long time. If Moira killed her, she didn't do it then."
"Wait, you think Moira killed her?" asked Rory.
"We don't know who killed her yet. It might even have been an accident," said Chloe. She looked at Stevens, "and we can talk about that part after Rory goes to bed."
"Aw..." said Rory.
"And over here on left, let's put dinnertime last night," said Ella. "What time is lights out in Deer Cabin?"
"They call it Puma Cabin, and about nine," said Rory. "The counselors tend to stay up later if the curtains are closed, but the rest of us have to pretend to be asleep."
"Nine? Can't blame Patricia for sneaking out."
The waitress arrived with the food. Ella flipped the placemat murder-side-down and accepted a plate of chicken sandwich.
Chloe watched as Rory carefully lifted the top bun on her bacon burger, checking carefully for any sign of illicit vegetation. Ella leaned over her shoulder and speared the slice of onion off the lettuce with the toothpick from her sandwich.
Stevens looked at Chloe, "I think it would save us some time if you just said what it is that you don't want me to talk about in front of your daughter."
"Still right here," said Rory.
"Maybe instead of 'suspect,' I should say 'muppet,'" said Stevens.
Rory made a noise in her throat like a bear that didn't want to be woken up from hibernation.
Ella coughed. "In general, making a verbal code doesn't work if you do it in front of the person you want to encode stuff from?" she said. She turned to Rory, "So what's this about Noah being banned from Archery?"
"Ommf," Rory said around a mouthful of sesame seed bun. "Thnff wnn blddd emvrywhrrr!" She swallowed. "It was awesome."
Chloe picked at her salad with grilled chicken and listened to Rory's recounting of the Time Kaytelynne Got to Ride in an Ambulance. This was the kind of camp visit Rory should have had, kooky cabinmates and outdoor fun and no one actually dying. But, Chloe thought in a moment of honesty, if no one had died, would she have had what felt like a good enough reason to leave L.A.? The adult Rory had made it sound like the price of that future was a life in which moments like these were few and far between.
"And Noah stopped crying long enough to say he was sorry, but by then they'd found the kid-sized neck brace and they were putting her on the stretcher." She took another bite of her burger. "That was before Noah was my buddy, though. He had a Deer Group boy then. Cava-something. People just called him Rectal Cavity."
Ella was shaking her head. "That's why I always give two safety demonstrations every time I take a group of girls into the lab," she said. "The goggles are your eye protection—"
"—not your headband," Rory recited.
Chloe waved down the waitress and got the check. There was a moment's confusion with Deputy Stevens deciding at the last minute that she should pay for her own meal separately. Rory was just unsticking her legs from the vinyl seat of the booth when the bell over the screen door gave a dispirited clang.
"Hi, Mr. B!" she said.
"And a fine evening to you, Deer Girl," said the music teacher. The half-fluorescent light of the diner entranceway wasn't doing any favors for his yellowed skin or his equally yellowed smile, but at least he wasn't covered in sweat. The shirt stretched over his torso looked cheap but new enough to have no stains.
Stevens leaned toward Ella, "How come he can call her—"
"Uh, it's because I'm a girl and I'm in Deer Group," Rory glowered.
"Also, he's known her for more than two seconds," Ella said under her breath.
Mr. Blanchard covered his mouth as if something about this was deeply amusing. "I thought I thought I heard young Trence saying you all might be here," he said to Chloe. He looked up at Chloe, "I'd pictured you for more of an eight o'clock kinda gal."
"I used to be," she said. "When I was a detective, I didn't always have enough control over my schedule to eat dinner at the same time as my older daughter. I'd find myself working on a case and only get home in time to put her to bed."
"Why don't you sit with us?" Ella suggested. "I could stand to have a cup of coffee."
"Uh—" Stevens. Then she straightened her back. "I don't think that would be appropriate."
Blanchard looked at Chloe, but Stevens was still talking. "He could be a ...muppet?"
"No way!" said Rory.
"I'm what now?" said Blanchard.
"I mean—"
"See what I mean?" muttered Ella.
"We should go," said Stevens. "I need to talk to you outside," she said to Ella and Chloe.
The bell rang again, letting them out into highway-scented air. The diner windows were wide enough for Chloe to see Blanchard try to wave off the hostess and watch them walk across the parking lot.
"Deputy, this guy clearly wants to talk to Chloe," said Ella.
"He keeps trying to get you alone," said Stevens.
"And you should let him," said Chloe.
"Then he's just going to have to talk to me. Nothing against you or your help, Captain Decker, but what if he tells you in a way we can't use?"
Chloe held up a hand, "Whether you think he's a suspect or only a witness, he's reacting to me. He knows something."
Rory was looking from Stevens to Chloe and back, a touch of wariness in her expression. To the self-oriented mind of a child, the only thing Blanchard could want to talk to her mother about was her, and it wasn't necessarily something she wanted shared.
"Witnesses tell us things we can't use all the time," said Chloe. "We use that information to get other information. One way to get a suspect to confess is to convince them that you already know everything. It's easier to do that if you do know everything."
"I always thought it was about fingerprints and DNA. The things criminalists find," said Stevens.
"Those are important yes," said Chloe. "But most of the time, it is witnesses and confessions." And it had been a long time since she'd had a partner who could draw out a suspect's true desires.
Indecision rippled behind Stevens' eyes. "He can talk to you all he wants when we're done," she said.
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"Not that I minded eating real food for once, but why can't I sleep in the cabin with the rest of Deer Group?" asked Rory as she put the baggie with the remaining half of her burger down next to the motel TV.
"Because someone got killed at your camp last night," said Chloe, unfolding the dingy room's only cot. The metal gave out a rusted scream, and she tried to remember when Rory had had her last tetanus shot.
"This is the grossest coffeepot I've ever seen," said Ella, walking in from the bathroom. "And I went to the University of Detroit. Besides, aren't the other girls in your group mad at you?"
"Yeah..." Chloe trailed off as she snapped the sheets down over the cot. "We heard there was a little drama about some art contest."
"It wasn't me, Mom, I swear!" said Rory.
"I believe you," Chloe said. Should she tell her that the camp staff all did too? Or would that make Rory's time here untenable? "But how are you holding up?"
"I didn't care about their stupid prize. Mr. Blanchard says that's probably why they're pretending they think it was me."
Chloe stopped. "What?"
"Mr. Blanchard said that, if they thought about it, they'd know I couldn't have snuck away from group sing long enough to wreck all that stuff." Not to mention finding and using the key to the art cabin. Unless of course she'd inherited her dad's little talent with locks... "They know it must have been one of their friends, but they don't want to blame their friends. They want to blame someone who thought the whole thing was dumb anyway. Ooooooooh!" She looked at the ceiling. "That's probably what Mr. B wants to talk to you about. 'Rory didn't do the thing; those other kids are just being stupid.'"
Chloe filed that one away.
"But didn't you have an entry?" asked Chloe.
Rory shrugged. "Mrs. Abby said we all had to make a sculpture about nature, so I made one. Then I spent the rest of art time thinking up things to call that bore Hayleigh the next time she got up my ass about being bait while she tries to film the lake monster."
"Language," said Chloe.
"I said 'bore' with a B, Mom," said Rory. "I came up with 'the only gateway to hell around here is your mouth,' 'the lake monster did come on shore but only to tell you to wash your underpants,' 'the lake monster jumped from your ego to your IQ and splattered on impact'—'"
Ella giggled and Chloe shot her a glare. Ella covered it with a fake cough.
Abbatemarco had said a statue that had been painted once and left alone would probably have looked like a shoo-in to win. But then someone had turned it into waterlogged fungal food, and Rory had had the gall to not care.
If someone had tried to make Lucifer jealous by sleeping with one of his lady friends from Lux, he probably only would have bothered to think about whether she'd walked away satisfied. But insinuate that he couldn't give a girl a good time...
"I wish I could have seen it," said Chloe. "What did you decide to make?"
"Auntie Maze," said Rory. "They wouldn't let me use real knives, so I did some stuff with tin foil. It was okay." Rory pulled back the blanket on the cot and pushed her feet between the sheets. She seemed to find nothing to complain about and slid the rest of the way in.
"I thought the assignment was nature," said Ella.
"Certain death is part of nature," said Rory, rummaging in her half-full duffel. "Huh," she said. "I forgot this was in here." She pulled out a small, black object that looked like it belonged in the hand and arm section of a weight room and started making it open and shut.
"Is that one of the Imperial walkers from the last Star Wars movie?" asked Ella.
"It's a capo. You put it on a guitar to make the notes higher. Mr. B showed us how to use them a couple days ago." Rory put the capo back in her bag and pulled out her pajama top.
Chloe stood quietly for a moment, watching Rory fold her camp shirt and pull the top on over her head. "That's right. You're learning guitar," she finally said.
Rory's hands went still on the hem, face still inside the torso, and Chloe could picture her hackles going up like a kitten at the sound of a vacuum cleaner. "Yeah..." she said from inside the shirt.
"It's okay for you to not tell me everything that happens at camp, but I hope you know you can if you want to," said Chloe. "I'm not going to be mad about something like that."
Rory pulled the rest of the top down and went back to looking in her bag.
"Your dad was actually a very talented at the piano," chimed Ella. "I brought him to my church one time and—" Chloe made a sideways motion with her hand. Ella frowned but stopped talking.
"I'm not taking piano. I'm taking guitar," said Rory. She pressed her little mouth together. "I don't care what Dad did."
Linda always said that therapeutic moments could be short, and the younger the person was, the shorter they were.
"Mr. B says guitar's good because you can pick it up and carry it. And you can play different kinds of music on it. And they have them in kid sizes."
"Did Mr. B say anything else?" asked Chloe.
Rory gave an unconvincing shrug. "Lots of things."
"Was he in a band once?" Ella asked lightly. "Maybe a roadie?"
"He said it was 'not for prime time,'" said Rory. " Hayleigh said that means he must have played background music for a soap opera," she frowned, "but Grandma's soap operas don't use guitar much."
"If you decide you like guitar, we can find you another teacher in L.A. For during the school year," said Chloe. Rory didn't answer. Loudly.
Rory mimed a yawn. "Anyone going to get the lights? Never mind." She fished an eyemask out of her pocket. The patterned cloth had "PUNK" sewn over one eye and "ROCK" over the other. Rory slipped the white elastic over her head and lay down.
The point of camp was to give children some space from their parents, some privacy and independence, and it was murder for Chloe not to know what was going on, but the truth was that she usually didn't know. The job of a uniformed officer and even a junior detective had left her with a lot more energy to be interested in Trixie's day to day ups and downs. And she'd had Daniel who, whatever his failings as a husband and partner, had been absolutely on board as a dad.
But this time was a complication: The adult Rory who'd found her and Lucifer in L.A. had played guitar. Music was the first thing she and her father had managed to bond over. It was part of the promised future, and one of the better parts of it.
Everything had seemed so clear the day she'd let Lucifer leave. For him, returning to Hell was about finding his calling and respecting their daughter's free will, but the events at Tenth and Swanson had sent Chloe a very different message: No matter how many bullets or wildfires or school shootings or insane ex-military Frenchmen the universe threw her way, her daughter would live to grow up, not only grow up, but grow up into someone strong and good, guaranteed, if her childhood went the way she said it had. Not even the new God Himself would prevent her from making it: two eyes, two ears, ten fingers, ten toes, one bruised but beating heart.
Chloe had felt like a perp staring at a plea deal. You can have a daughter who's angry but alive and healthy... or you can roll the dice and raise her with a man who always either puts his own needs ahead of others' or dives overboard with indulgence, and you'll have to do it in a world that spends half its time on fire, cooks up a new plague every five years, and could still blast into nuclear war any day.
And it wasn't just her. Rory had talked about Trixie, Maze, Charlie, everyone, as if they were fine, no one dead, in jail, or murdered and sent to Hell by an evil angel's henchmen.
The motel bed creaked as Chloe tried to get comfortable. She stared at what she could see of Rory's face. So far, the universe had kept its side, but who was to say that was really how any of this worked?
Chloe swallowed a metallic taste in her mouth and realized she'd been biting the inside of her lip.
If she got another chance, now that she'd seen the good and the bad, would she have made the same choice again? Sure thing or roll the dice?
Chloe met Ella's eyes across the way. She caught a hint of gold at her neck. She'd started wearing the cross again. Not for the first time, she wondered whom Ella prayed to. Amenadiel? The old God? Her friend Azrael?
I miss him too, Ella seemed to say. But that's life.
Chloe reached up and turned out the light.
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"No, no the cross-section!" Ella shouted into her phone in the parking lot outside the camp offices where they'd agreed to meet Stevens. "Yes, hematoma! HE! MAH! TOH! MAH! Ugh, why does the wifi here suck so hard?" She clicked her power button and exhaled into the disgustingly fresh morning air.
"I heard Tanisha and Alicia telling some of the Puma boys that it was that bad last year," said Rory. She turned to Chloe, "I thought they wouldn't take my phone away here. I mean, you told me to call you if..." If another camper's parent hated cops. If another camper's parent was a cop who'd been fired because of her reforms.
Chloe frowned, "I don't remember seeing 'no electronics' in the brochure," she agreed. And Hayleigh had kept her camera, the camera they still hadn't tracked down, which might have footage of the murder on it.
Chloe squinted in the morning light and waved at Stevens as she got out of her olive-colored Tahoe.
"I can barely get through to the county examiner's office," Ella way saying. "They texted me the upshot, and it seems she died from a blow to the head, but I can't get any details about whether it was consistent with hitting her head before or after she fell off the bridge. My opposite number thinks the stream water would have washed away any particulates in the wound."
Chloe nodded and then turned to Stevens. "How'd it go with the sheriff?" she asked Stevens.
"Adams said I could have another day," said Stevens. "He said a place full of kids was better handled with 'a woman's touch,'" she air quoted.
"So he's that kind of sexist," dulled Ella just as Chloe gave a dull, "Hm" and Rory said, "Even I know that's condescending."
"I told him Patricia was outside looking for a video camera the night she was killed, and he agreed to ask for a warrant. He'll message me when it's issued. He also signed off on you two helping me out—unofficially," Stevens said with a careful wave, "but I'm afraid..." she tipped her head sideways toward Rory.
Rory looked down at her camp shirt. "You're afraid of tie-dye? That tracks. You're what Kaytelynne two bunks down from me calls a 'combination autumn,'" said Rory.
"Can I have some of your concealer?" Stevens murmured.
"No," said Ella.
"I understand," Chloe said to Stevens. "Rory, honey, Deputy Stevens means you can't be with us when we—"
"Fine, it's almost time for Strings anyway," said Rory.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" asked Stevens just as Chloe was opening her mouth to answer Rory. "The teacher might have killed—I mean hurt—I mean ...unalived... Uh..."
"I found the body, remember?" said Rory. She turned to Chloe. "This is a camp where a murder happened. Either let me go do my camp stuff or call me an Uber. Or we could actually drive home together."
"Rory, you know I—"
"Important job, you told me," Rory waved a hand and stomped off.
Chloe watched her go. The adult Rory had wavered back and forth about whether Chloe had been a good mom. She'd said her job had taken up all her time and attention and, so far, she'd been right.
Not for the first time, she shoved down the guilt. Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and Occupy Wall Street had all fizzled for lack of clear leadership. Someone had to step up. She worked long hours because police reform made a better LAPD for her city, a better legacy for John Decker, Daniel Espinoza, every cop who'd ever tried to live up to it, a better world for Rory and Trixie and Charlie to live in. And because Lucifer hadn't made much in the way of financial provision for his rambunctious offspring. He'd had the foresight to put part of Lux in Maze and Amenadiel's names, but that was as far as it went.
When Trixie had been twelve, she'd gone to science camp during the day but chattered about rockets and launch angles over the dinner table most nights. She and Dan had never packed her off to sleepaway. But then, Trixie had never printed out a webpage with a picture of children doing theater next to a mossy lake and asked to go.
This whole thing had been about free will. But on any individual day, Chloe never knew if she was doing the right thing.
"Uh..." Stevens trailed off, "so when a kid does that, do you go after her or..."
Chloe sighed. "I'll just ...wait a minute and then make sure she gets there okay."
Ella exhaled, "She's giving her time to cool down," she explained to Stevens.
"Oh, do you have kids too?" asked Stevens.
Ella's smile didn't break. "No," she said. "I'm just the world's best aunt." She turned to Chloe. "Speaking of me being awesome, you might want to bring this," she pulled something black out of Rory's duffel and tossed it Chloe's way.
Chloe caught the capo out of the air and nodded.
"You and I'll head to Millner's office and draw up a timeline," said Ella. She raised an eyebrow to Stevens, "And since we were invited, I'll show you what kinds of snooping we're allowed to do." She gave the deputy two thumbs up.
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Chloe walked down the paved path. Slowly. The distance as the crow flies probably wasn't long, but the camp's official path was cut into strange sections. She saw brown lines in the thinned grass which were obviously the real routes campers took from one place to another, probably because they were shorter. But this time, if Rory got there first, so much the better.
Chloe could hear voices through the screen door interspersed with the basswood chaos of seventeen sets of undeveloped fingers all attempting major C at the same time. Her shoes went still against the blacktop. She'd forgotten there would be a whole cabin full of other children sharing the lesson instead of Rory and her teacher alone.
She'd taken enough family camping trips with Trixie and Dan to know that tentsites were infested with people who thought they could play acoustic guitar. It seemed Sierra Lake was where they were manufactured.
"Now that our warmups have left my ears cowering like a chicken the night before the all-Jackson-County barbecue wing competition—"
The accent was less pronounced. Maybe that was how Stevens had figured out he was hiding something. Chloe would have to remind her that many people's accents got deeper when they were stressed, and being interrogated was stressful. Chloe gave up the pretext that she wasn't eavesdropping and stepped to the side of the door to listen.
Through the mosquito screen, she could just make out Blanchard, sitting at an angle with an unremarkable acoustic balanced on one leg. On the wall behind him, though, Excalibur gleamed like a promise.
"—let's try our other exercise. Why are we here? Chipmunk Chet, you first."
"'Cause my parents signed me up for beginner strings? Uhhh... 'cause my mom loves the Mumford Sun."
"I've heard worse. Next," said Blanchard.
"I wanna play sweet licks and get girls!" came a high male voice. There was a chorus of snorts.
"I want to learn music so I can get better at math." "Have my own band." "Finally beat my stupid sister at something." "Find the exact harmonic that makes crickets shed their exoskeletons."
"Don't make me rethink my 'there are no stupid answers' rule, Noah," said Blanchard. "Otherwise, that was not terrible." There was a sound like weight shifting in a cheap plastic chair. "And our only Deer Girl?"
Chloe heard a mutter that was definitely Rory's voice.
"Some of the ears in this room were too close to Willie Nelson's amps back in the day."
"TO MAKE MY MOM SHUT UP ABOUT MY DAD!"
"Now Aurora, what do we say about that?"
Rory exhaled through her nose. "That when we do things because our parents wouldn't like them, then we're still letting them run our decisions."
"And when we do what we want?" he asked. "Whether they wouldn't like it or whether they would?"
"I know! I know!" Noah waved his hands in the air. "We're free."
"That's it for warmups, everyone. Now let's knuckle down and—no, Noah, not literally! You're still wearing that ridiculous mood ring!"
Chloe stepped back and away from the screen door. Her feet sounded unnaturally loud against the blacktop, but none of the students turned around. For a second, it looked like John Blanchard had seen her over the back of their heads, but she couldn't be sure.
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Chloe made it back to Millner's office with her heart pounding.
"Decker," said Ella. "It's still in your hand." Chloe blinked and Ella pointed to the capo. "So did you talk to..." Chloe shook her head.
Stevens turned around from where she was attaching a piece of white printer paper to the wall with blue painter's tape. "Best we could do. They've only issued me a Wobblepad in my dreams." She pointed to a spot a week back. "Here's where her campers threatened to go to Millner about Patricia being too controlling."
Chloe mentally filled in her own spaces. Rory's arrival at camp. Rory's switch from acting to music. Rory getting blamed for the destruction of the art contest. Rory being uncharacteristically sanguine about it. ...Rory getting life advice from a music teacher who probably shouldn't have been working at a summer camp.
"Before we get started," she said, staring into the white paper to clear her mind. "Director Millner did not give us permission to search his office, but he did give us permission to come in. Don't touch a thing. Just use your eyes. Do you see anything? Don't open any drawers."
Stevens blinked and twisted at the waist, awkwardly taking in the office. "For what?"
"Anything in plain sight," said Chloe. "Papers, a phone lying out. Anything that's up on a computer screen."
"But if I happen to be, say, looking for a stapler and I open a drawer..." Ella smiled.
"We'll get to advanced plain view doctrine later," said Chloe.
"Uh, nothing obvious," said Stevens. "No big cardboard box marked 'murder evidence.' There was a letter to one of the parents on his desk when we got here." She turned back to the wall. "Patricia arrived at camp in June for counselor orientation," said Patricia, "but most campers are here for two-week sessions."
"While the parents go on their own vacations," said Ella.
"Some of them are just city kids that their parents sent out here for fresh air."
"So they know what an ecosystem is and we don't get a dying earth like in Avatar III," said Ella.
"Patricia's Puma Group campers got in eight days ago—" and so had Rory "—except for Alicia and Tanisha, who are here all summer."
"So far, we have three possible motives," said Ella. "I say we call them Art Contest Coverup, Hayleigh Wants a Pulitzer, and Counselor Canoodling."
Chloe stared at the three pages, all lined in Ella's neatest paperwork handwriting. They had Patricia's arrival at the camp for counselor orientation through Rory and Noah finding the body with Moira. Something was missing...
Ella and Stevens worked the board, moving pieces of paper back and forth. Chloe lost track of time. There were advantages to being a lieutenant, and her work with reform was important, but she'd missed being on the ground, the immediacy of leads and information. By the time they had the last three days filled in, the sun had risen high, and she had no fewer than four mosquito bites, thanks to the hole in the window screen.
Chloe's phone buzzed. She peeked at the screen and saw it was only an update from WobbleWallet about her contested charges. A donation to some charity she'd never heard of. What the hell was "Dollars for Dendrites"?
"I've been thinking," said Stevens. "What if Hayleigh did find her camera this morning, and she's just pretending she didn't?"
"It's possible," said Chloe. Just because these kids were cute didn't mean they couldn't think a few steps ahead. "If she thinks there's something on that camera that we'd erase. Or if she thinks there's something on that camera that incriminates her."
"You think she could have killed Patricia?"
Chloe took a careful breath. "You'd be surprised what kids think they're going to get in trouble for. When my older daughter was seven, she accidentally broke a plate. It was just a piece of cheap junk, but she didn't know that. She hid the pieces in her father's gym bag."
Children felt guilty about irrational things... She wondered how many children Lucifer had freed from their loops since he'd left. Would she have traded their souls for a more emotionally comfortable family life? Watching Rory's music class had been...
"Decker?" Ella's voice popped into her ears. Chloe looked up, realizing her mind had wandered. "You here?" Ella asked again.
"Mm-hm?" Chloe nodded.
There was a scratchy knock on the door. "Come in," called Stevens.
The counselor with the red braids—Erinne, Chloe remembered—stuck her head in. "Excuse me, I'm looking for Mrs. Decker." Erinne made eye contact. "Rory's …not where she's supposed to be."
.
.
"Where is she, then?" growled Chloe as her shoes made gouges in the gravel pathway. She barely heard Ella close the office door and scurry after her.
"This isn't that big of a deal," Erinne said in what Chloe guessed was her "hysterical parent" tone of voice. "I wouldn't even have told you, but Moira said you were right here, so—"
Chloe turned on her heel, forcing Erinne to stop. "She's done this a lot, hasn't she?" she demanded. The other girls blamed her for a camp disaster, she'd been safety-buddied with the most pathetic boy on this tectonic plate, and her counselor thought she was a hellion, but Rory didn't want to be sent home to L.A. with its uninterrupted wi-fi service and non-bean-based food? There was something going on at this camp.
"I'm sorry, what are we doing?" asked Ella, catching up.
Erinne breathed in. "Rory's—"
"Rory's up to something," said Chloe, cutting Erinne off.
"Of course she is. She's Rory."
Which was Ella's way of saying "She's her father's daughter" or even "She's Ray-Ray's niece," always keeping secrets instead of confiding in their supposed friends. Always waiting until things blew up in their faces. Always driving her crazy. Now a girl was dead and there might be a killer on the loose and now she was ditching her chaperones?
"I knew I should have found her before telling you. It's not like she could have gotten anywhere," Erinne was blathering.
She could have gotten to a lake. Children drown in lakes. She could have gotten to a road. Anything can happen to children on roads. And for the first time in years, the fact that she'd once had a time travel visitor prove to her that it wouldn'tbrought her no comfort at all.
"When you people lose track of my daughter, where does she usually go?" Chloe snapped at the girl.
"I'm not Rory's counselor," Erinne said with a cloth-thick layer of forced calm, and Chloe had the insulting suspicion that this was her "hysterical parent mode" voices. "I could go get Moira or Trence or we could check the swing area, the cabins, the performance grotto—"
"If I may," came raspy voice. Chloe turned to see Blanchard moving toward them with a disgruntled-looking Noah at his heels. "Our resident worm-wrangler here tells me he's short a buddy. I'm afraid with his luck, it could be Halloween and raining full-sized Milky Ways and he'd still look up and get Good 'N' Plenty to the face."
Chloe glared over at Blanchard exactly as if this were all his fault.
"I didn't mean to!" said Noah, hit by the death-glare ricochet. He extended one finger over his shoulder, "We went to nature study after Strings. She pointed behind me and said 'isn't that a Bembidion brownorum beetle,' and even though I know they haven't been formally observed in the wild since 1966, I thought, 'If it is there, I'll never forgive myself'—"
"And when he turned back, he found no stinkbug and no little stinker," Blanchard looked at Chloe. "Begging your pardon, Detective."
Chloe was in no mood. "You do not get it," she practically snarled. She grabbed the rough edge of his cheap collared camp shirt and pulled his face an inch closer. "Rory is sneaking off to sell counterfeit Magic: The Gathering cards again. Or Rory is teaching younger campers how to knife fight. Or Rory stole some undergrad's supply of black market peanut butter cups that she doesn't know are laced with Adderall—"
Blanchard gave a high-pitched snort.
"Don't laugh at that! That was the worst parent-teacher conference of my life!"
And whatever Rory was up to, that was the real reason she wanted to stay at camp, not whatever rock and roll philoso-nonsense Blanchard thought he was peddling at Beginner Strings, and the sooner this liver-spotted adolescent figured that out, the better.
"I really don't think there's much to be worried about," said Erinne. "It's not that unusual for one of the campers to take a minute or two to themselves."
"When there's a murderer around?" Chloe demanded. She should have seen this coming, she told herself.
"You think whoever killed Patricia would go after a child?" Blanchard said, starting to show actual concern for the first time.
She glared at him. "If they think they're going to get caught?" She opened her mouth again but didn't trust herself to talk about Malcolm. Blanchard's eyes turned off to his left.
"Deputy Stevens?" Chloe managed.
"Yeah?" she said.
"I need to talk with Mr. Blanchard. Alone. I understand if that means—"
"Captain Decker, I think I told you I can't—"
"Oh my gosh! What're we yelling about?" piped a too-cheerful voice from behind her.
Chloe turned around and shot a coal-fired glare into that little solarpunk smile.
"Rory," said Chloe.
"Yes, Mother?" she answered. "I was just practicing my chords like Mister Blanchard told us." Rory's eyes grew big and cherubic as she pulled innocence over herself like a shawl in a Raphaelite painting. She held her undersized acoustic guitar by the neck the way a preschooler might drag a teddy bear by the arm.
"That look didn't work on me when your dad used it, and it's not working now," said Chloe.
"Must've worked a little…" muttered Blanchard. Noah scratched his head, confused.
"Listen to me, Aurora," said Chloe. "Maybe Patricia died in an accident. Maybe someone killed her and ran away. Maybe the person who killed her is still here—"
Erinne gave a squawk. "But Millner said it was some drifter and you already caught—" Then she read the room and shut up.
"Rory," Chloe stared into those two night-black eyes. "If I think you're going to put yourself in danger, I will load you into a cab and send you back to L.A. right then. Mrs. Grabowski will be waiting for you at home. No hanging out with Auntie Maze or Aunt Eve, no nothing. You're under house arrest until I get back." Chloe looked down at the guitar and thought about snatching it out of her hands, but it was just too first-act Coco. Instead, she stalked over to Blanchard, shot him a glare as she reached under his arm, and took Noah by the wrist.
Noah pushed his glasses up with his free hand while Chloe dragged him over to Rory. "If you are not with either your buddy system buddy or your official camp group at all times, you're gone. Is that clear?"
Rory gave the sulky little shrug that was as close as Chloe ever got to a yes.
"Good," said Chloe, and she smacked Noah's hand into Rory's.
Rory cringed. "Those fingers have been up his nose," she protested. "And the other possibilities haunt my nightmares!"
"You know Kleenex are too thick for me. They just shove everything further up there," Noah pointed with his free hand.
"Noah was worried about you, young Rory," said Blanchard. "It was dis-ingenuous of you to distract him with B'diarhhea brownpantsum."
"Bembidion brownorum," muttered Noah.
"But did he cry, though?" Rory asked speculatively.
"I wouldn't be worried about Excalibur right now if I were you, Deer Girl," Blanchard said with an eyebrow wag Chloe.
"I wouldn't be if they'd figure out how to put a whammy bar on an acoustic," said Rory.
"A conundrum for the ages. Now if Miss Erinne would be so good as to accompany me, I'll escort these two miscreants back to their nature lesson."
Noah stamped his foot. "For the fifth time, I don't need Miss Cream; it's just eczema!"
"And we'll get your ears checked."
"She drives me crazy," said Chloe as they watched the four of them leave.
"Yup," said Ella, nodding her head. Meaning she was her father's daughter. Meaning she was Ray-Ray's niece.
Stevens materialized at Chloe's elbow. "Did you see how he was scratching at his wrist?"
"He said it was just a rash," said Ella.
"Not the boy. Blanchard," said Stevens, pushing back a clump of sweaty hair. "I think it's nerves. He's hiding something, and knows we know even if we don't know."
"Or he got bitten by one of the twenty million mosquitoes out here," said Ella. She looked at where Noah and company were disappearing behind the corner of the mess hall. "Decker wouldn't let Rory leave with him if she thought he killed Patricia."
"I don't think he killed Patricia," Choe echoed as they turned back to Millner's office. "If something's making him nervous, it's probably whatever he wants to tell me about Rory."
Stevens made a disgruntled sound.
"Remember why we're here," said Chloe. "You might find out Blanchard's secret along the way, but each step has to be about finding justice for Patricia."
"You're right," Patricia mumbled as she put her hand on the doorknob. She squinted through the rusted bug screen. "Hey, wait a minute!"
Before Chloe could react, Stevens jumped back into the office to the immediate sounds of a scuffle. There was the slippery sound of knocked-over papers, a chair scraping and falling over, and more than a little "Wha-hut-hey!"
Stevens jumped back out of the room holding a wriggling Hayleigh like a magician who'd got the rabbit by the ears.
Ella blinked. "Or maybe Rory isn't the only camper who takes off on her own."
"Look what I found messing up our timeline!" Stevens said with a big grin. She was only gripping Hayleigh by the arm, but the orange-haired tween was wriggling like a kitten held by the scruff of the neck.
"You left the door unlocked!" she protested.
"No we didn't," said Ella.
"Okay, so maybe the lock was locked, but we all know it opens if the last person didn't push it shut all the way. Look, I just want my camera back," said Hayleigh. She held up both arms like a diplomat calming ornery locals from the consulate balcony. "If there's anything in my footage about Patricia, I'll send you a copy right away, I promise. What's your WobbleDoc ID?"
"Do you think the camera's in the director's office?" asked Stevens.
"Could be, but mostly I'm in here for my phone. It has my find-my-stuff app on it."
Stevens stopped. "Are you telling me…"
Ella went on, "…that you have a program on your phone…"
"…that could show us where that camera is?" finished Stevens.
Hayleigh eyed each of them, "Uhhhhhhhhh. Yes?"
Chloe walked over to Stevens and muttered a suggestion.
Hayleigh looked back and forth between the two of them.
"I thought we only needed the camp's permission," said Stevens. "In loco parentis."
"Permission that Millner is more likely to give if Hayleigh has already agreed," said Chloe.
Hayleigh scratched at a mosquito bite. "Look, I just need the camera back. I am not going to be able to get another one." She screwed up her face and looked Stevens in the eye. "You have to swear not to erase any footage of the lake monster or mothman!"
"Deal," said Chloe.
"Is she serious?" said Stevens.
"Isn't mothman more in the southeast?" asked Ella.
"Yes, but his known range matches that of the North American barred owl." Hayleigh tapped her chin and nodded. "I think he's eating them."
.
.